Art

4. Kunst

[25 Jul 02] Anyone without a taste for castles, cathedrals and canvases is going to find European tourism pretty dull; and since Berlin has few of the first two, that puts a lot of pressure on the paint. Fortunately, the city has museums and galleries galore; even better, a €10 pass buys you three days' entry to all of them. We had seven days in Berlin, three of which Jane spent at a conference, leaving me free to see anything I wanted. As usual, I wanted kultur und kunst...

In Full Bloom

[ 7 Mar 02] One of my favourite things in London last weekend was an exhibition at the British Museum of Richard Hamilton's series of prints and drawings based on James Joyce's Ulysses. I loved the prints themselves—particularly In Horne's House and The Heaventree of Stars—but just as much the thought of Hamilton working on them over a lifetime, for fifty years or more. The only comparable artistic endeavours that come to mind are in the realm of fantasy illustration. That sense of finding the world in a single book, of drawing continuous inspiration from it, is almost enough—perhaps it is enough—to prompt me to finally read Ulysses.

no publisher would be remotely interested in the work of an unknown student. I was a bit cast down. I kept going, but I never really showed it to another publisher.

More fool T.S. Eliot (the editor in question), and lucky for us that Hamilton kept going. You can see some of the results here, but if you get the chance go and see them hanging on the wall where they belong.